Bangkok Round 2

The last time we visited Thailand was in 2005, our first international trip together when we came to teach English in NE Thailand and then travelled for a month after as well. There was a huge culture shock the first time he came but now that we knew what to expect, the novelty has worn off a bit. The transvestites, the women lining the streets waiting to be "chosen,"  the smells (good and bad), the multitudes if street hawkers, fearing for your life as you walk across the street, etc. Bangkok has changed a lot since we were here last and there are a lot more American . There are a ridiculous amount of tourists here compared to Tokyo and you can reasonably expect that a Thai person working at any establishment knows English which really surprised us. We would ask questions in broken English but get responses in grammatically correct sentences, which was strange.  We loved the hotel we stayed at -  Crowne Plaza Lumpini Park Hotel, which also had a great location close to a sky train station. We didn't realize it at first, but our hotel was close to the Pitpong, which is the red light district of Bangkok. We got asked a million times if we wanted to see "a sexy show" or a "ping pong" show, as we heard it.  This time around we are just enjoying the city - eating and shopping with out scrambling to the tourists sites since we did them all the last time around. Again it was a short visit but we will be back later in our trip. Loving the fruit especially mangosteens and passionfruit, especially since you can't get good quality ones in Canada. Of course, I have a food report in every post! Had awesome cheap Thai food at a hole in the wall called P Kitchen (tripadvisor recommendation) and yummy Indian food at Indian Hut - both recommended! Our next stop is Nha Trang, Vietnam, which is a beach town north of Ho Chi Minh City. It's a bit strange to take Turkish airlines on a flight from Bangkok to Ho chi Minh.  We have a flight almost every 3-4 days for 3.5 weeks- Adam's nightmare unfortunately.

Merry Xmas from Tokyo!

We are just on the train ride back to Narita airport in Tokyo - next stop is Bangkok, Thailand! Although we barely scratched the surface in what there is to see in this crazy city, we are looking forward to the heat! Tokyo was so chilly and Adam and I really don't do well in the cold especially since we didn't want to lug jacket around for the rest of our trip. Tokyo is an extremely lively city - its like New York on steroids! There are so many people at any given time, wherever you are, but despite the  population, we were amazed how polite and orderly people are. There are organized lines for everything and its not chaotic at all unlike other populated places where people push and shove to get where they wanna go without care and concern for others.

People are extremely fashionable here - its too bad Tokyo was our first stop because it would have been nice to shop here. There are stores everywhere and within a 3 block radius in just one area, you will be 3 LV stores, 3 Zaras, etc - makes it hard to use landmarks to retrace your steps! In our short time, we explored several  areas of the city. We stayed at Shibuya granbell hotel, which was a decent hotel for our purpose but nothing fancy. The important part is that it's extremely close to Shibuya metro station, which is the only way people get around here. A taxi from the airport, for example, costs over $300 USD, so you cone to learn the subway system quickly, which is so efficient. We also visited the Sen-ji temple, the oldest Buddhist temple in tokyo dating back to year 628 in the Akasura area of the city, roamed around the Shinjuku area, visited Tokyo Sky tree, which recently opened and is one of the world's tallest buildings at 634 meters high! We didn't have great luck with food in our short time here unfortunately and we all know how important food is for me! The problem was the lack of English menus and the abundance of pork in their diet. With sushi we were safe! We had probably the freshest sushi possible at the Tsukiji fish market. However, it was hard to describe that we just wanted rolls and salmon sashimi so I thought I'd go out on a limb and do the set menu at a famous but small sushi restaurant called Daiwa. Although the restaurant seems to have a name, majority of restaurants names have Japanese characters which  really doesn't help unless you ask and get lucky if you find someone who speaks enough English to help you. The fish market is a popular tourist attraction for a "sushi breakfast" and some people come at 5 am to watch the live tuna auctions. We were not that hardcore and arrived at 8 am instead as we were a but jet lagged but not enough to come at 5 am! We tried to find highly rated restaurants on tripadvisor but since there are restaurants and shops every few feet, we could never find the ones were looking for or if we did the line up was crazy long. We would definitely  love to come back and explore Japan better but when it's warmer - perhaps in cherry blossom season! Now that we know it's only a 11 hour direct flight away, it's definitely on our "return to" list - could probably come back with our future kids since its so safe and orderly!